


Delusions and Damned Fantasies

by sidana



Series: Richard's Damnation [1]
Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: BDSM, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 15:49:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16478432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidana/pseuds/sidana
Summary: Richard struggles with his wants and needs





	Delusions and Damned Fantasies

Disclaimer- not my characters, not my universe. I'll put everyone back when I'm done playing with them 

Originally posted to PdS somewhere around 2006-09

***********

It wasn't about her. It wasn't about him. It was about the other him, the one that would make anyone other than a strong alpha lose control and give away his secret at the worst possible time. And it was how she was acting around him now that made him remember another her that Richard still had, at best, extremely mixed feelings about.

With relief, Richard slipped back into house, grateful to be alone so that no one else could see the way he was shaking. It had started out as a simple enough Coalition meeting, and for whatever reason, everyone was managing to be relatively civil to each other, even the newcomer Haven who still was feeling the need to throw his weight around to sort out where he ranked among the shifters of St. Louis.

And then he had walked into the living room, something should have been an innocent trip from his bedroom to his car. She had reached out to grab his hand, to draw him closer so that they could kiss before he went to parade his body in front of half the female population of St. Louis. He would never entirely be happy with her kissing another man, but if that had been all, he could have tolerated it like he did of Jean-Claude or Micah.

But it was more than that: the way she grabbed that impossibly long hair with her other hand, snapping it back hard until his head jerked back; the way she bit down on his lip when their mouths finally met. Richard kept up with the Circus rumor mill. He knew what had been happening among Anita, Asher, and him. Richard knew what the little movements promised the other man, what was going to happen when he finished his shows and went home to the single woman he wanted to meet his needs.

He could clearly picture how the two of them looked together. It wasn't that hard because he could still clearly remember how the other man had looked when he was with Raina, no matter how much Richard wanted to forget that time in his life. He remembered how he had felt when he had watched Raina tear into the man, the look of perfect trust in his eyes as fingernails turned claws and teeth grown larger and sharper sunk through skin and flesh until they were all on the ragged edge. He remembered the look of the blood moving under his skin as it bruised and the glorious smell of it as it burst across skin like a dam sprung a leak.

And though Richard had never actively joined in Raina and Gabriel's games with that man, Raina had known that if she wanted his presence, all she had to do is say that Nathaniel was going to be the evening's entertainment and he would come running to watch. If Raina felt like he had been good that week, she would even sometimes let him lick the blood off her hands while Gabriel was off taking measures to make sure that Nathaniel was not permanently damaged. Whenever those nights were over, he was always deeply ashamed that he even passively was involved with that scene, but then the next time would come, and he would always be drawn back for more. After all, he could always justify in his mind that if he was there, just maybe he could keep Raina and Gabriel from taking it a little too far.

He just felt fortunate that Nathaniel either didn't remember the details of his presence on those nights, or was still far too submissive to think of saying anything to Richard about those times unless Richard somehow gave him permission to do so. It was their dirty little joint secret.

And something that was going to permanently stay a secret if he had anything to say about it.

He wasn't quite sure how long it took, but he did manage to calm the shake down enough that he could start the process of latching on to other bits of normalcy. He brewed himself a pot of tea, and then took teapot and teacup to the living room. There, he settled himself on the couch and began to grade the latest stash of science essays. He was an alpha. He controlled his emotions, not the other way around.

At least that was the way it was supposed to work. It turned out that he had left the shields between Anita and himself open just enough that he could feel Anita, and through Anita he could feel Nathaniel. It wasn't so bad when Nathaniel was dancing. If anything, there was something nice about how the man felt as he glided across the stage, to feel the joy in simply moving without having to hide and clumsy up what you really were.

But then Nathaniel was finished, and the two of them moved alone into a vacant office. He could feel the surge of hope, desire, and pleasure before he slammed down every mental barrier could in order to try to avoid the metaphysical hurricane Nathaniel was about to send his way.

Because being inside Nathaniel's head when someone else was hurting him was about a hundred times worse than just being in the same room when it happened. It wasn't like the old days when he could pretend it was only about watching Raina at her finest, all the while allegedly ignoring just how much he enjoyed watching Nathaniel too. There had been too many times when he had clenched his hands into fists so tight that his nails bloodied his own palms because it seemed like the only way he could keep himself from joining the game and becoming one of the people to directly blood Nathaniel. For all that Raina wouldn't have minded sharing, doing that would have broken something inside of him, would have left him with even fewer shreds of humanity he could grab in a storm than the little of that he still had.

And now he was terrified that one day he would see into Nathaniel's mind and find out that the other man not only remembered him from those days, but part of the way he used to tremble with desire in front of them was not just because of Raina but, as he had always suspected, because of him as well. He had always been so careful to keep Nathaniel at arm's length, to smack him back every chance he could get, because if Nathaniel wanted him too, there just might be a night when he slipped up and they did something he would end up regretting for the rest of his life.

He was an alpha. What that meant in the pack was not easy for him to deal with. He had to channel what he was into protecting the people he cared about. He wasn't supposed to let himself think about how at the end of the day it felt good to be the guy in charge of so much. A good leader didn't let shit like that go to his head.

And there was no way it couldn't go to his head if they started that dance. Nathaniel would be willing, he was sure of that. And he had seen enough over the years to know how to make it damn good for the both of them. He knew it would make him feel alive just like it did with the girls who liked it hard from him. Damn, he was just about to go hard himself from the thought of it all. But he couldn't take that step. He was an alpha. It meant he was supposed to be capable of amazing self-control when any other wolf would have acted out those impulses by now. He had to channel that preternatural strength inside of him in a way that let him keep at least a little bit of a hold on human morality.

Better to let Anita meet Nathaniel's needs. For all that she had made some choices in her life he could never agree with, at least she wasn't like him. There had been times when what she felt for Nathaniel during those sessions had bled through everyone's shields, and what was there for the other man was love tinged with desire, but there was not the same black pit of need he would have felt if he had been in her place.

It was all so fragile now. For all that he would never fully trust Jean-Claude, he wanted to be able to keep working with the vampire to try to build some sort of preternatural Camelot out of St. Louis, a safe fortress for both their kind. But in order to keep that dream alive, he had to bury how he felt about Nathaniel, because right now those kinds of revelations would shatter the foundation of that fortress.


End file.
